have, and can have, no verifiable assurance scientific minds. It is in the principle of of any existence but the Whole--the mere the conservation of energy, and in that of aggregate of sense-presented particulars hith- evolution, particularly as viewed under its erto actual or yet to become so. Thus the aspect of natural selection, that we encounter very method of natural science tends to ob- the full force of the pantheistic drift. And literate the feeling of the transcendent, or it seems, at the first encounter, irresistible. at least to destroy its credit at the bar of That all the changes in the universe of obdisciplined judgment, and in this way to jective experience are resolvable into mobring the votary of natural investigation to tions, either molar or molecular; that in regard the Sum of Things as the only reality. spite of the incalculable variety of these On this view, the outcome of the scientific changes of motion, the sum-total of movemethod might seem to be restricted to that ment and the average direction of the moform of pantheism which I have named the tions is constant and unchangeable; that an atheistic. Most obviously, the inference unvarying correlation of all the various would be to materialism, the lowest and modes of motion exists, so that each is conmost natural form of such pantheism; yet vertible into its correlate at a constant nusubtler reasoning, recognizing that in the merical rate, and so that each, having passed last resort experience must be consciousness, the entire circuit of correlated forms, returns sees in the subjective idealism which states again into its own form undiminished in the Sum of Things as the aggregate of the amount all this seems to point unmistakperceptions of its conscious members, the ably to a primal energy-a ground-form of truer fulfillment of the method that pre- moving activity-one and unchangeable in supposes the sole and immediate validity of itself, immanent in but not transcendent of experience. But beyond even this juster its sum of correlated forms, while each inidealistic construction of atheistic panthe- stance of each form is only a transient and ism-beyond either form of atheistic pan- evanescent mode of the single reality. Nor, theism, in fact-the mere method of nat apparently, is this inference weakened by the ural science would appear to involve con- later scholium upon the principle of the consequences which, even granting the legiti servation of energy, known as the principle macy of belief in the transcendent, would of the dissipation of energy. On the conrender the transcendent God the sole reality; trary, the pantheistic significance of the formthat is, would bring us to acosmic pantheism. er principle seems to be greatly deepened by For the empirical method, so far from vindi- this. Instead of a constant whole of movcating either the freedom of the personal ing activity, exhibited in a system of correwill or the immortality of the soul, withholds lated modes of motion, we now have a vaster belief from both, as elements that can never correlation between the sum of actual enercome within the bounds of possible experi- gies and a vague but prodigious mass of poence; so that the habit of regarding nothing tential energy-the "waste-heap," as the but the empirically attested as part of science physicist Balfour Stewart has pertinently dismisses these two essential conditions of named it, of the power of the universe. Inman's reality beyond the pale of true knowl to this vast waste-heap" all the active enedge, and into the discredited limbo of un- ergies in the world of sense seem to be consupported assumptions. tinually vanishing, and to be destined at last to vanish utterly: we shift, under the light of this principle of dissipation, from a primal energy, immanent, but not transcendent, to one immanent in the sum of correlated actual motions, and also transcendent of them. Very impressive is the view that here arises of a dread Source of Being that It is, however, not until we pass from the bare method of natural science to its two great modern consequences, and take in their revolutionary effect as subsidiaries of method in every field of natural inquiry, that we feel the full force of the pantheistic strain which pulls with such a tension in many modern engulfs all beings; it is Brahm again, issuing forth through its triad Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva-creation, preservation, and annihilation to return at last into its own void, gathering with it the sum of all its transitory modes. And let us not forget that the conceptions out of which this image of the One and All is spontaneously formed, are the ascertained and settled results of the science of nature in its exactest empirical form. cal method, can be taken as permanent, but that even the latest must be reckoned as certified only to date, with a reservation, at best, of "tentative expectancy" for hope of continuance; that "natural selection," as empirically verified, is a process of cancellation, a selection only to death; and that the Whole alone has the possibility of final survival. The "tentative expectation " founded on the entire sweep of the observed facts, and not extended beyond it, would be that the latest observed survivor, man, is destined like his predecessors to pass away, supplanted by some new variation of the Whole, of a higher fitness to it. And so on, endlessly. This clear pointing, by an empirically established and empirically construed doctrine of evolution, toward the One and All that swallows all, seems to gain farther clearness still when the principles of conservation and of evolution are considered, as they must be, in their inseparable connection. They work in and through each other. Conservation and correlation of energy, and their "rider” of dissipation, are in the secret of the mechanism of the process of natural selection, with its deaths and its survivals; evolution is the field, and its resulting forms of existence, more and more complex, are the outcome, of the operations of the correlated, conserved, and dissipated energies; and in its principle of struggle and survival, evolution works in its turn in the very process of the correlation, dissipation, and conservation of energy. It therefore seems but natural to identify the potential energy—the "waste heap" of power When to this powerful impression of the principle of conservation, as modified by that of dissipation, we now add the proper effect of the principle of evolution, the pantheistic inference appears to gather an overpowering weight, in no way to be evaded. As registered in the terms of a rigorous empirical method, evolution presents the pic ture of a cosmic Whole, constituted of varying members descended from its own primitive form, by differentiations so slight and gradual as not to suggest difference of origin or distinction in kind, but, on the contrary, to indicate clearly their kinship and community of origin. Still, these differentiations among the members, and the consequent differences in their adaptation to the Whole, involve a difference in their power to persist amid the mutual competition which their common presence in the Whole implies. In this silent and unconscious competition of tendencies to persist, which is called, by a somewhat exaggerated metaphor, the struggle for existence, the members of the least adaptation to the Whole must perish earliest, and only those of the highest adaptation will finally survive. So, by an exaggeration akin to that of the of correlation with the Whole of natural seformer metaphor, we may name the resulting persistence of the members most suited to the Whole the survival of the fittest; and as it is the Whole that determines the standard of adaptation, we may also, by figuratively personifying the Whole, call the process of antagonistic interaction through which the survivors persist a process of natural selection. Here, now, the points of determinative im. port for inference are these: that the "survival" is only of the fittest to the Whole; that it is the Whole alone that "selects"; that no "survival," as verified to the strictly empiri lection. And thus we appear to reach, by a cumulative argument, the One and Only in which all shall be absorbed. If we now add to these several indications, both of the method and of the two organic results of modern science, the further weighty discredit that the principles of conservation and evolution appear to cast upon the belief in freedom and immortality, the pantheistic tone in modern science will sound out to the full. This discredit comes, for human free agency, from the closer nexus that the correlation of forces seems plainly to estab lish between every possible human action and the antecedent or environing chain of events in nature out of which the web of its motives must be woven; and from the pitch and proclivity that must be transmitted, according to the principle of evolution, by the heredity inseparable from the process of descent. For immortality, the discredit comes, by way of the principle of evolution, through its indication, under the restrictions of the empirical method, of the transitoriness of all survivals, and through its necessary failure to supply any evidence whatever of even a possible survival beyond the sensible world, with which empirical evolution has alone to do; while, by way of the principle of the conservation and dissipation of energy, the discredit comes from the doom that manifestly seems to await all forms of actual energy, taken in connection with the general discredit of everything unattested by the senses, which the persistent culture of empiricism begets. In short, while the empirical method ignores, and must ignore, any supersensible principle of existence whatever, thus tending to the identification of the Absolute with the Sum of Things, evolution and the principle of conservation have familiarized the modern mind with the continuity, the unity, and the uniformity of nature in an overwhelming degree. In the absence of the conviction, upon independent grounds, that the Principle of existence is personal and rational, the sciences of nature can hardly fail, even upon a somewhat considerate and scrutinizing view, to convey the impression that the Source of things is a vast and shadowy Whole, which sweeps onward to an unknown destination, "regardless," as one of the leaders of modern science has said, "of consequences," and unconcerned as to the fate of man's world of effort and hope, apparently so circumscribed and insignificant in comparison. MODERN SCIENCE IS, STRICTLY, NON PANTHEISTIC. But now that we come to the closer question, whether this impression is really warVOL. VI.-42. anted, we stand in need of exact discrimination. With such discrimination, we shall find that, decided as the inference to pantheism from the methods and principles just discussed seems to be, it is, after all, illegitimate. Our first caution here must be, to remember that it is not science in its entire compass that is concerned in the question we are discussing. It is only "modern science," popularly so called—that is, science taken to mean only the science of nature; and not only so, but further restricted to signify only what may fitly enough be described as the natural science of nature; that is, so much of the possible knowledge of nature as can be reached through the channels of the senses; so much, in short, as will yield itself to a method strictly observational and empirical. Hence, the real question is, whether empirical science, confined to nature as its proper object, can legitimately assert the theory of pantheism. And with regard now, first, to the argument drawn with such apparent force from the mere method of natural science, it should be plain to a more scrutinizing reflection, that shifting from the legitimate disregard of a supersensible principle, which is the right of the empirical method, to the deliberate assumption that there is no such principle, because there is and can be no sensible evidence of it, is an abuse of the method in question-an unwarrantable extension of its province to decisions lying by its own terms beyond its ken. This shifting is made upon the assumption that there can be no science founded on any other than empirical evidence. That there is, and can be, no science deserving the name, except that which follows the empirical method of mere natural science, is a claim which men of science are prone to make, but which the profoundest thinkers the world has known--such minds as Plato, or Aristotle, or Hegel-have certainly pronounced a claim unfounded, and, indeed, a sheer assumption, contradicted by evidence the clearest, if oftentimes abstruse. When, instead of blindly following experi ence, we raise the question of the real nature and the sources of experience itself, and push it in earnest, it then appears that the very possibility of the experience that seems so rigorously to exclude supersensible principles, and particularly the rational personality of the First Principle, is itself dependent for its existence on such Principle and principles; that, in fact, these enter intellectually into its very constitution. But, in any case, this question of the nature of experience, of the limits of possible knowledge, and whether these last are identical with the former, is one in the taking up of which we abandon the field of nature, and enter the very different field of the theory of cognition. In this, the pursuer of natural science, as such, has not a word to say. Here his method is alto gether insufficient and unavailing; if the problem can be solved at all, it can only be by methods that transcend the bounds of merely empirical evidence. So, again, in the inferences to pantheism from the conservation of energy and the principle of evolution. Strong as the evidence seems, it arises in both cases from violating the strict principles of the natural scientific method. All inferences to a whole of potential energy, or to a whole determinant of the survivals in a struggle for existence, are really inferences-passings beyond the region of the experimental and sensible facts into the empirically unknown, empirically unattested, empirically unwarranted region of supersensible principles. The exact scientific truth about all such inferences, and the supposed realities which they establish, is, that they are unwarranted by natural science; and that this lack of warrant is only the expression by natural science of its incompetency to enter upon such questions. Natural science may therefore be said to be silent on this question of pantheism; as indeed it is, and from the nature of the case must be, upon all theories of the supersensible whatever-whether theistic, deistic, or atheistic. Natural science has no proper concern with them. Science may well enough be said to be non-pantheistic, but so also is it non-theistic, non-deistic, non-atheistic. Its position, however, is not for that reason anti-pantheistic, any more than it is anti-theistic, or anti-deistic, or anti-atheistic. It is rather agnostic, in the sense, that is, of declining to affect knowledge in the premises, because these are beyond its method and province. In short, its agnosticism is simply its neutrality; and does not in the least imply that agnosticism is the final view of things. The investigation of the final view, the search for the First Principle, science leaves to methods far other than her own of docile sense-experience-methods that philosophy is now prepared to vindicate as higher and far more trustworthy. Yet, when once the supersensible Principle is reached, in some other way-the way of philosophy, as distinguished from that of natural sciencescience will then furnish the most abundant confirmations, the strongest corroborations; the more abundant and the stronger, in proportion as the First Principle presented by philosophy ascends, evolution-wise, from materialism, through pantheism, to rational theism. For science accords most perfectly with the latter, although she is, in herself, wholly unable to attain the vision of it. But it must be a theism that subsumes into its conceptions of God and man all the irrefutable insights of materialism, of deism, and, eminently, of pantheism; of which, as I will hope this paper has shown, there are those of the greatest pertinence and reality, if also of the most undeniable insufficiency. G. H. Howison. : ETC. THE important events in our Pacific community, such as call for mention in a periodical of THE OVERLAND'S character, have of late taken a remarkably collegiate turn. Apart from purely industrial events, such as the convention of fruit-shippers, the notable occurrences of the past half-dozen weeks have been the inauguration of President Sprague over the new Mills College; the appointment of Professor Holden to the presidency of the State University; the formal establishment of the great Stanford foundation; and the renewal of the anti-Chinese agitation on this coast. Of the first two of these events we have already spoken, as they occurred: the others have fallen within the past month. The THE Stanford foundation is now so far advanced as to be a text for almost endless comment. terms of the grant; the probable effect of this or that provision; the new and highly experimental features, of which there are several; the way to secure the highest possible degree of coöperation between the new group of schools and those already existing in the State: these are points of the highest significance, which should by no means be passed by with bare mention. We are reluctantly compelled to postpone any discussion of them till a later issue of THE OverLAND; but we do it with the less reluctance, because the first expression in view of the fact of Mr. Stanford's magnificent gift must so certainly be only of gratitude and admiration, that a month may without impropriety intervene before any critical consideration of details. The splendid gift already made, with the assurance, which seems to be authoritative, that this is only the beginning; the intention which is understood to be settled in the minds of Mr. and Mrs. Stanford, to devote the remainder of their lives to the service of the University; the magnificence and magnanimity of all this do, indeed, incline those most in sympathy to say least-in the spirit of Emerson's lines: "And loved so well a high behavior In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, To those whose hearts are most sincerely in the work of education, or of otherwise helping humanity to a higher stand, those who feel Mr. and Mrs. Stanford's great gift almost as if they had received a rich personal endowment, who watch its development, and dwell with almost breathless interest on the probable effect of each detail: to these, the instinctive thought of the action is not as "renunciation," but as achieve ment. It is hard to express adequately what a man becomes by such an act. Mr. Stanford was already, take it all in all, the foremost citizen of the State; but by the completion of the present endow ment, he will become so to an extent that it is almost impossible to find paralleled in modern times. It is perhaps hardly realized by any one at present how far, a hundred or a thousand years from now, this University foundation will overshadow the railroad achievement, great though that was; but if any one wishes to thus realize how far the conferring of intellectual benefit upon a community outlives and outweighs the performance of great industrial works for it, let him try to tell the name of the builder of any one of the great Roman roads-works as marvelous for their time, and as valuable to the state, as the first great transcontinental railroad is to ours; and then let him think of the undying fame of Maecenas, the patron of art and literature and learning. But greater even than the achievement of lasting honor among one's fellow-men of later generations, is it to become a living power among them forever. If some inconceivable power should smite the name of Stan ford absolutely ont of men's memories, he would still possess that greater thing than fame—undying power, immortality of beneficence on earth. "Oh, may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In lives made better by their life!" was the aspiration of one who believed in this earthly immortality only, and found it great and satisfying enough to make up for the loss of personal immortality. To one who believes in the personal future life, it gives two immortalities to "live again in lives made better by his life." This is the aspiration of many; the achievement of many to a greater or less degree; but it rarely happens to one man and woman to have both the power and the will to thus live after death on a great scale, working and shaping beneficently in the lives of many-not of tens nor of hundreds, but of thousands and tens of thousands, as the generations follow on. Herein is the wisdom of money spent in education rather than in charity -that each recipient of influence becomes in his turn a center to transmit the same in every direction, so that it multiplies forever in geometric ratio; while charity stops and perishes with the immediate recipi ent. And this power to mould unborn generations for good, to keep one's hands mightily on human affairs after the flesh has been dust for years, seems not only more than mortal, but more than man-it is like the power of a god, to kill and make alive; and it is both sound theology and sound philosophy to say that in beneficent action a man does, in fact, to some extent, rise into participation in a divine nature and divine activity, becoming "coworker with God in the shaping of the world to a good outcome. It does not often, in the history of mankind, happen to |